ELIZABETH -- A truck driver, swerving to avoid hitting the vehicle in front of him on the New Jersey Turnpike, caused a chain-reaction crash Wednesday that killed one man and caused delays that reverberated through much of northeastern New Jersey, authorities said today.

The crash happened around 1:15 p.m. Wednesday, near Newark Liberty International Airport in Elizabeth, when traffic slowed, causing the driver of a tractor trailer to slam his breaks on and veer from the center to the left truck lanes, said State Police Sgt. Stephen Jones.

But the driver, Keith Waters, a 51-year-old Camden County man, wasn’t able to stop the tractor before it hit a Chevy Silverado pickup truck, pushing the vehicle into two other tractor trailers.

“As a result, it became engulfed in flames with the driver trapped inside,” Jones said of the pickup.

The rig kept moving, ensnaring a dump truck, two box trucks, three passenger vehicles and a tractor with no trailer in the wreck.

The driver of the pickup truck, believed to be a Long Branch man, was killed and his body burned beyond recognition. The Union County Medical Examiner’s Office was trying to identify the body using dental records this afternoon, police said.

But there was nowhere else for the cars to go, Turnpike Authority spokesman Joe Orlando said. Turnpike traffic was gridlocked well past the evening rush-hour commute. The Garden State Parkway had 20 miles of slow-moving traffic. Routes 1 & 9 were at a crawl and Interstate 78 was jammed on either side of the Turnpike interchange.

“You divert people, eventually it’s like when the ground gets saturated during a rain storm,” Orlando said. “It can’t take anymore water in, then it floods. That’s what this is — you just run out of capacity.”

Tyler Adel, a Paramus resident who was driving to class at Rutgers in New Brunswick, saw the smoke from about a mile away.

“The car was on fire when I drove by. I couldn’t identify anything about the car,” he said.

Four people, all traveling in passengers vehicles, were treated for minor injuries, Jones said.
Waters, who lives in Chesilhurst, voluntarily agreed to take a blood test to determine if he was drinking or on drugs. No charges had been filed against him, but the case remains under investigation by detectives from several State Police units.